tateo 



IN MEMORIAM 



FRANK - 

WAYLAND 
HIGGIN^ 



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Iprocecbtngs of tbe Xet3i8laturc 

of tbe 

State of IRew l^ork 

commcmoratlre of tbe 

Xife anb public Scrvtccs 

of 

ifranF^ Ma^Ianb Mtgotns 

Xate Governor of tbe State 
bclO at tbe 

Capitol, flDonbais jevenlng, Hprtl 8, 1907 



Hlbany, "Hew l^orft 






J. B. LYON COMPANY 

STATE PRINTERS 

1909 

(5, tf. 'i-z^ 



In nDcmorlam 



jFcank Ma^lanb MtaG^ns 



3Botn august 18, 1856 
Died J'ebruane 12, 1907 



(Bopernor of tbc State of "Wew porh 
1905*1906 

Xleutenant-(5overnor 
1903*1904 

Senator 

1894 to 1902 



Committee of the Senate 

Iborace XQbite Blbert C. f ancbet 

■aailUam 3. Culls Samuel J. 'Ramspcrtier 

Jamca 3. ^rawle^ 



Committee of the Heeembl)? 

3e09C S. pbllllpa Jean X. 3Burnett 

3obn 1;. patton Cbarles ta. /ISead 

3. Jtia^bcw TXlalnwrlgbt 3obn 3. Wolk 

3obn C. fjacftett Cbotnas 3. kartell 

iftanh S. JDurjBnshl 




proclamation bp tbc (Bovcrnor 

STATE OF NEW YORK, 

Executive Chamber, 

Albany, February 13, 1907. 
To the Legislature : 

^T is with deep sorrow that I announce the death 
at Olean on February 12th of Frank Wayland 
HiGGiNs, recently Governor of this State. His 
pubhc career and the distinguished services rend- 
ered by him to the State are fresh in your memory. For eight 
consecutive years he sat in the Senate and by the nobility of 
his character, his sagacity, and his conscientiousness in the 
discharge of every duty he won the friendship and high esteem 
of all his colleagues regardless of part}' affiliations. Later, as 
Lieutenant-Govemor, he presided over the deliberation of the 
Senate with dignity and impartiality. Ilis administration as 
Governor was characterized by honesty of purpose and by 
painstaking fidelity, and was made notable by the achievement 
of most important reforms. As his health failed he continued 
his work without flinching, counting no personal sacrifice too 
great which would enable him to perform his duty. No soldier 
on the battle field ever exhibited greater herosim than was his 
when, at the peril of his life, he matle his public appearance 
to discharge what he conceived to be his public dutj- on the 
occasion of his successor's inauguration. 

He was a man of the highest integrity and he has left to 
the people of the State the precious memory of a character 
without blemish. 

In recognition of his services I have ordered that the flags 
upon the public buildings be displayed at half mast, and I 
reconnnend such further action b}- the Legislature as may 
be deemed appropriate. 

CHARLES E. hughes. 

By the Governor, 

Robert H. Fuller, Secretary. 




proceebtnos of the Xegtslatute 

oX tbc 

State of Bew ^oxh 

In Senate, Wednesday, February 13, 190T 

jFTER the reception and reading? of the 
proclamation of the Governor, Mr. Raines 
moved that, out of respect to the memory 
of former Governor Higgins, the Senate 
do now adjourn. 

The President put the question whether the Senate 
would agree to said motion, and it was decided in the 
affirmative by a rising vote. 

In Assembly, Wednesday, February 13, 1907 

Immediatel}' after the reading of the journal, 
Mr. Volk said: Mr. Si)eaker, it is my painful duty 
to announce to my colleagues in this House the 
death of Frank AV. Higgins, a distinguished resident 
of my district, a former State Senator, I^ieutenant- 
Governor, and Governor of the State of New York. 

Appreciating the deep sorrow which his death has 
caused, not only in this body but throughout the State, 
and knowing well the esteem in which he was held, 
I move that when the House adjourns it do so out of 
respect to the memorj^ of the Hon. Frank W. Higgins. 

9 



In riDemoriam 

Mr. Speaker put the question whether the House 
would agree to said motion, and it was determined in 
the affirmative by a rising vote. 

On Thursday, February 14, 1907, the following 
resolution was adopted bj'' the Senate and concurred 
in by the Assembly : 

Whereas, The announcement of the death of 
Frank Wayland Higgins, late Governor of the State, 
has occasioned deep sorrow to all citizens, and espe- 
cially to the members of the Legislature, in which 
body, as a member of the Senate, and also as its 
presiding officer, he had long rendered most faithful 
and acceptable service; be it 

Resolved, That a joint committee of the Senate 
and Assembly, consisting of sixteen Senators, includ- 
ing the Temporarj^ President of the Senate, and 
nineteen members of the Assembly, including the 
speaker of the Assembly, be appointed by the Presi- 
dent of the Senate and the Speaker of the Assembly, 
respectively, to represent the Legislature at the 
funeral of ex-Governor Higgins. It is further 

Resolved, That a committee of five Senators and 
nine members of the Assembly be appointed bj'^ the 
President of the Senate and the Speaker of the 
Assemblj% respectively, to prepare suitable resolu- 
tions, and to arrange for appropriate public memorial 
exercises in commemoration of the life and services 
of Governor Higgins. It is further 

Resolved, That, out of respect to the memory of 
the deceased, no session of the Legislature shall be 

10 



held on Friday, February 15th, but that when the 
Legislature adjourns today, it be to meet on Monday 
evening, February 18th, at 8:30 o'clock. 



^ 



The President appointed as the committee to 
attend the funeral, Senators Raines, Grady, Wliite, 
Davis, McCarren, Wilcox, Armstrong, Cullen, Hill, 
Fancher, Ramsperger, Allds, Tully, Frawley, Gates 
and Boj'ce. 

The Speaker appointed as such committee on the 
part of the Assembly, Messrs. Wadsworth, Moreland, 
Phillips, Rogers, Patton, Hammond, Dowling, 
Burnett, Prentice, Volk, Mills, Averill, Allen, 
Hamilton, Burns, Hackett, Burzynski, A. E. Smith 
and J. A. Foley. 

Monday, February 18, 1907 

In accordance with a concurrent resolution of the 
Senate and Assembly heretofore adopted, the Presi- 
dent of the Senate apjjointed as the committee on 
the part of the Senate to arrange for memorial exer- 
cises in honor of the late Frank ^Va3'land Higgins, 
former Governor of this State, Senators White, 
Fancher, Tully, Ramsperger and Frawley. 

The Speaker appointed as such committee on the 
part of the Asseinbly, Messrs. Phillips, Burnett, 
Patton, Mead, \Vainwright, Volk, Hackett, Farrell 
and Burzj^nski. 

II 



■fln flDemoriam 

In Senate, Monday, April 8, 1907 

Pursuant to the arrangements made by the special 
committee of the Senate and Assembly, the President 
left the chair and with the Senate proceeded to the 
Assembly chamber to join in the exercises in memory 
of the late Frank Wayland Higgins. 

Assembly Chamber, Monday, April 8, 1907 

The Legislature having met in joint session in the 
Assembly chamber, Senator Horace White, chairman 
of the joint committee, called the meeting to order. 

Pra3'er was offered by Rev. James W. Ashton, 
D.D. , of Olean, as follows: 

Let us praj'. Almighty and ever gracious and 
glorious Lord, creator of all things and governor 
of everything, mercifully look upon Thy servants in 
the Assembly in Thy name and presence, and bless 
and prosper all our works, begun, continued and 
ended in Thee. Graciously bestow upon us wisdom 
in all our doings, strength in all our difficulties and 
the beauty of holiness and harmonj^ in all our con- 
nections. Let Faith be the foundation of our hope 
and Charity the fruit of our obedience to Thy 
revealed will. O Thou preserver of men, graciously 
enable us now to conduct these exercises which we 
have undertaken to the honor and glory of Thy 
name, and be mercifully pleased to accept this service 
at our hands. 

May all who are lawfully appointed to rule in our 
country, both in state and nation, according to the 

12 



constitution, be under Thy special guidance and 
protection, and faithfully observe and fulfill all their 
obligations to Thee and to their fellow citizens. 
Have mercy upon this whole land, and so rule the 
hearts of Thy servants, the President of the United 
States, the Governor of this State and all others in 
authority, that they, knowing whose ministers they 
are, may above all things seek Thy honor and glory, 
and that we and all the people, dailj' considering 
M'hose authority they bear, maj^ thankfully and 
abundantly honor Thee, in Thee and for Thee, 
according to Thy blessed word and guidance. May 
all who come within these halls of legislation have 
one heart and one mind to love, to honor, to fear 
and to obey Thee as Thy majesty and unbounded 
goodness claim, and to love one another as Thou has 
loved us, and may every discordant passion be here 
banished fi-oni our bosoms. 

We meet here tonight as a band of brothers in 
Thy presence, guided by the same Almighty hand, 
daily sustained by the same beneficent Providence, 
and traveling the same road through the gates of 
Death. " Man that is born of a woman hath but a 
short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh 
up and is cut down like a flower. He fleeth as 
it were a shadow and never continueth in one 
stay. In the midst of life we are in death." 
Of whom may we seek for succor but of Thee, O 
Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased. Yet, 
O Lord, God most hol}% O holy and most merci- 
ful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains 

13 



Tin nDemoriam 

of eternal death. Thou knowest. Lord, the secrets 
of our hearts. Shut not Thy merciful ears to 
our prayer, but spare us, Lord most holy, O 
God most mighty, Thou most worthy Judge 
eternal. Suffer us not at our last hour for any 
pains of death to fall from Thee. It hath pleased 
Thee, Almighty God, in Thy wise providence, 
to take out of this world the soul of our de- 
ceased brother. We have committed his body 
to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, 
dust to dust, looking for the general resurrection 
in the last day and the life of the world to come, 
through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose second 
coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, 
the earth and the sea shall give up their dead, 
and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in 
Him shall be changed and made like unto His own 
glorious body according to the mighty working 
whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Him- 
self Wherefore, Almightj^ God, with whom doth 
live the spirits of those who depart hence in the 
Lord, we give Thee hearty thanks for the good 
examples of all those Thy servants who having 
finished their course in faith do now rest from their 
labors; and we beseech Thee that we with all who 
are departed in the true faith of Thy holy name may 
have our perfect consummation and blessing, both in 
body and soul, in Thy eternal and everlasting glory. 
We thank Thee for the good example of Thy 
servant, the late Governor of this Commonwealth, 
who was faithful in duty and brave in death, the full 

14 



Jfranh TKIla^Ianb Hiootns 

vessel of Tliy grace and a light of the world in his 
generation ; and we humbly pray that in our vocation 
or ministry, in that part or station of life to which 
Thou has been pleased to call us, we may truly and 
heartily serve Thee. 

O merciful God, the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who is the resurrection and the light, in 
whomsoever believeth shall live, and whosoever loving 
and believing in Him shall not die. We luimblj' 
beseech Thee, O Father, to raise us into the 
life of righteousness, and finallj% O merciful God, 
O heavenly Father, who has taught us in Thy 
Holj' Word, lead us to the life everlasting. Look 
with pity upon the sorrows of all these Thy serv- 
ants to whom has come the distress of this 
bereavement. Remember them, O Lord, in mercy. 
Sanctify them and endow their souls with patience 
under this affliction and with resignation to Thy 
blessed will. Comfort them with the sense of Thy 
kindness, lift up Thy countenance upon them and 
give them peace. And when the time of our labor 
shall draw near to its end, the pillars of our strength 
decline to the ground, enable us then to pass through 
the vallc}' of the Shadow of Death, supported by 
Thy rod and staff to those mansions beyond the skies 
where love and joy and peace forever reign. 

To our prayers, O Lord, we join our unfeigned 
thanks for all Thy goodness and kindness to us and 
to all men, for our correction, preservation and all the 
blessings of this life, and above all for Thy redemp- 
tion of the world by Thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

IS 



Hn f»emoriani 

We humbly beseech Thee, give us that due sense 
of Thy mercies that our hearts may be uafeignedly 
thankful, that we show forth Thy praise not only 
with our lips but with our hearts by giving up our- 
selves to Thy service and by working before Thee 
with righteousness all our days. Grant us, O Lord, 
that Thy blessings may be so grounded inwardly in 
our hearts by Thy grace that they may bring forth 
in us the fruit of good living, to the honor and praise 
of Thy name, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love 
of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be 
with us forevermore. Amen. 

After an anthem by the choir of St. Peter's 
Church, Mr. White said : 

We are assembled here pursuant to a joint reso- 
lution of the Senate and Assembly to pay the last 
affectionate tribute to the noble life and great public 
services of the late Governor of the State, Frank 
Wajdand Higgins. Let me present as the presiding 
officer of the evening Governor Charles Evans 
Hughes. 

Governor Hughes upon taking the chair spoke as 
follows : 

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Senate and 
Assemblj^ and Fellow Citizens: We have gathered 
to show our respect and esteem for a distinguished 
citizen, recently Governor of this State. In the time 
of our busiest activities, engrossed with duties of Aast 
importance, we have been sharply reminded of the 

16 



franft THfla^Iant) HiOQins 

uncertainty of life and of the permanent value of 
character. We cannot afford to lose any opportunit}' 
to state in proper perspective those qualities of mind 
and of heart which evidence themselves in self-sacri- 
fice and in loyal devotion to duty. 

More important than increase in population or 
in wealth is the enrichment of the State in those 
examples of hii^h-minded citizenship, through which 
alone we can protect ourselves against becoming the 
victims of our material success. I have already 
expressed my appreciation of the long-continued and 
efficient service of him in whose honor we have met. 
He was a faithful public servant, and in the many 
important offices that he filled he revealed a sincerity 
of purpose and an integrity of character which will 
always be remembered. 

Anthem by the choir of St. Peter's Church : 

"l^EAD, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 

- * *» I-ead Thou me on; 

The night is dark, and I ara far from home. 

Lead Thou me on 
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene; one step enough for me. 

I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that Thou 

Shouldst lead me on ; 
I loved to choose and see my path; but now 

Lead Thou me on. 
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears. 
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years. 

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still 

Will lead me on. 
O'er moor and fen, o"er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone; 
And with the morn those Angel faces smile. 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. 
17 



In riDemoriam 

Governor Hughes : it is with pleasure that I now 
introduce to you Jacob Gould Schurman, President 
of Cornell University, who will make the formal 
address of the evening. 



18 



Memorial Ebbress 

In bonor of 

XTbe Xate (5overnor MiOGtns 

OcUverea big 

3acob 6oul^ Scburman 

ptesiOent of Cornell •QnivcrsttB 

Hssembl? Cbamber, Hlbanv 
/Don&a\? Evening, Hprtl 8, 1907 



jftank Ma^^Ianb MtgGlns 




ao&resa bg Jacob 0oul6 Scburman 

\OVERNOR HUGHES, Honorable Gen- 
tlemen of the Senate and Assembly, Ladies 
and Gentlemen: 

We are met to-night to commemorate the hfe 
and services of Frank Wayland Higgins, the last 
Governor of our State. He was an honest man, a 
high-minded and honorable gentleman, a patriotic 
citizen and a faithful and efficient public servant. 

May our commonwealth teem with men like its 
last Governor ! Their solidity of character and 
disinterested devotion to the public good consti- 
tute the bone and sinew of the best American 
citizenship. Nor shall a community moulded by 
their influence be without greater men and even 
the greatest, as you will see from the past history of 
our State. To-night I mention two of these whose 
names a chance association of dates has recalled. 
The life of INIr. Higgins filled out half a century. 
If you go back another half century to January 11, 
1807, you come to the birthday of a citizen whose 
name is likely to be current as long as the State en- 
dures — that great philanthropist, Ezra Cornell. And 
receding another half century and pausing at the 

21 



II n fiDemoriam 

same month and the same day of the month — Janu- 
ary 11, 1757 — you arrive at the nativity of a man 
who, born in a West Indian island, became the fore- 
most citizen of New York, and, after Washington, 
the best master builder of our republic. And this 
great and illustrious name recalls us to our theme. 
For, as I shall later explain, it is almost certain that 
Mr. Higgins was, indirectly, the gift of Alexander 
Hamilton to the State of New York. 

Mr. Higgins's Family. 

Frank Wayland Higgins was born in the village 
of Rushford, Allegany county, on the 18th of August, 
1856. He died at Olean on the evening of February 
12, 1907. 

The family of Mr. Higgins is of English origin, 
and the ancestral line can be traced back to the time 
of Eing Edward the First. But the English ances- 
tor most important to the American genealogist is 
that Richard Higgins who was born in Langley 
Parish, Stoke Hundred, Hertfordshire, in the year 
of the death of Queen Elizabeth, when the House of 
Tudor was succeeded by the House of Stuart, under 
whose oppressive sway Englishmen migrated to 
America for the protection and preservation of their 
religious faith and civil liberties. Among those who 
came to Plymouth Plantation was Richard Higgins, 
with others of his family. He held an official relation 
to the colony for thirty-three years, during which he 
performed services of importance and honor. The 
Higgins family continued to reside in Massachusetts 

22 



until prior to the Revolution, when they removed to 
Middlesex county, Connecticut, and at the outbreak 
of the Revolution they were engaged in ship building 
on the Connecticut river. But the family could fight 
as well as build ships or found colonies. And early 
in the war we find five brothers enrolled among the 
Continental soldiers, one of them a member of Alex- 
ander Hamilton's Connecticut company. And as 
Hamilton was interested in land in that portion of 
Western New York which afterwards became the 
county of Allegany, it is a surmise of much proba- 
bility that the connection of the Connecticut soldier 
with Alexander Hamilton led to members of the 
Higgins family acquiring land in Allegany county 
early in the nineteenth century and removing there. 
They were joined by a young relative who had 
been practicing medicine in Montreal, Canada, Dr. 
Timothy Higgins, a native of Connecticut, who con- 
tinued to reside in Allegany county till his death at 
an advanced age. His son, Orrin Thrall Higgins, 
was the father of the future Governor of New York. 
Mr. Higgins' mother, Lucia Cornelia Hapgood, 
died when he was but a cliild. She was descended 
from early settlers in the colony of Massachusetts 
Bay, the Taylors and Hapgoods, who arrived in 
1631, who were among the founders of Hartford, 
Connecticut, and whose descendants furnished sol- 
diers to the colonial and revolutionary wars, as well 
as a statesman to the Colonial Congress. Of this 
New England stock, Mrs. Higgins admirably exem- 
plified its culture and character, its virtues and graces, 

23 



Un riDemoriam 

along with a brightness and joyousness of life to 
/ which even the best New England type does not 

always manage to attain. 

Orrin Thrall Higgins is one of the multitude of 
men who have verified Emerson's saying that 
"America is another name for opportunity." Na- 
ture has supplied our country with an infinitude of 
resources, and our people have an infinitude of wants. 
The man of organizing genius knows how to satisfy 
these wants with those resources; he perceives a de- 
mand, actual or probable, and forthwith he fur- 
nishes the commodities to supply it. He is a bene- 
factor to society, and society does not begrudge him 
compensation for his service or profit on the capital 
he risks in enterprises to meet future demands. And 
so Orrin Thrall Higgins prospered. He was a busi- 
ness man of great ability. Recognizing their future 
value in 1853 and subsequent years he purchased 
timber lands in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
Oregon and Washington. Latter he purchased iron 
ore lands on the Mesaba and other ranges in Min- 
nesota. He built up grocery stores in Olean and in 
the neighboring oil regions of Pennsylvania. But 
this prosperous merchant was as honest as he was 
successful. His personal notes circulated as currency 
in Western New York during the days of stringency 
in the money market at the time of the Civil war. 
And while his word was as good as gold, he carried 
justice and fair play into business, recognizing the 
rights and claims of competitors and abhorring the 
doctrine that a rival's ruin was the road to fortune. 

24 



The son of such a father was well born. And 
Frank Wayland Higgins was worthy of his lineage. 
Devoting his life to business and the public service, 
despite the alluring and multifarious temptations to 
which that career exposed him, he never swerved 
from that path of honor and integrity which his 
father had traveled before him. Pre-eminentlv 
Frank Wayland Higgins was an honest man. And 
let us never forget that 

" An honest man 's the noblest work of God." 

Education and Business. 

But before studying the man let us glance at his 
childhood and bovhood. Though his mother died 
so early, it is pleasing to learn that she stimulated 
and developed the child's taste for music and art — 
an {esthetic education which was happily continued 
after her death. Some of the boy's drawings hang 
to-day upon the walls of the house at Olean. But 
the effects of liis musical training were deeper and 
more lasting. Throughout his youth and manhood 
he was never more happy than when joining with 
his full rich voice in the old hymns of his childhood. 
He was a lover, too, of classical music. And in the 
severe strain of the last years of his life the only rest 
he found was in listening to music in the privacy of 
his own family circle. 

His scholastic education young Higgins received 
first at the Rushford Academy and later at the River- 
view Military Academy at Poughkeepsie, from which 
he graduated in 1873. This was followed by a 

26 



In flDemoriam 

course in a commercial college. He seems to have 
shown no special talent for scholarship, though a 
boy of quick and alert intelligence. Henceforth 
books played a large part in the development of his 
powers through constant private study along economic 
and historical lines and important training came from 
intercourse with men and affairs. At an early age 
he traveled extensively in his own country and, per- 
haps, gained the first impetus for public life in his 
journey through the Yellowstone region with Generals 
Grant and Sherman. After a brief experience in 
business in Chicago and Denver we find this youth 
at nineteen engaged in the mercantile business on his 
own account at Stanton, Michigan. In 1879 he 
entered his father's office in Olean, New York, for 
the purpose of assisting him in his widely extended 
business acquiring a partnership in the same. Upon 
the death of his father Mr. Higgins inherited one-half 
of his father's estate. Already he had purchased 
timber lands in common with his father. And later 
he was to make further acquisitions in the States of 
Oregon and Washington. To the management of 
these properties his energies as a business man were 
mainly devoted. Yet he did not abandon the grocery 
business, into which, in 1890, he introduced the 
significant and hopeful experiment of profit-sharing. 
Many a reformer has seen in this method of co- 
operation between capitalist and employees the 
solution of the grave economical problem which 
presses to-day with such force upon all thoughtful 
minds. If the plan of profit-sharing is to succeed, 

26 



jTranK TKHa^lanb Mlggins 

it can only justify itself by its results. WTiether Mr. 
Higgins' motive was philanthropy or self-interest — 
the improvement of the condition of the employees 
or the enlargement of his profits, or both together — 
one is grateful to him for having made the experi- 
ment, and made it at a time when no ulterior politi- 
cal motives could have been attributed to him. He 
lent the capital employed in the business; the profits, 
beyond a certain return for the use of the capital, 
were divided among the employees. The experi- 
ment proved a success. 

Mr. Higgins was in all his undertakings a suc- 
cessful business man. Whether he could have cre- 
ated a large business for himself is a question we 
need not consider. The qualities he possessed ad- 
mirably fitted him to conserve and augment the 
estate which he inherited, and they were in turn 
fostered and developed by that employment. In his 
business there was no call for that bold initiative, that 
prophetic and far-seeing anticipation of future circum- 
stances by which great fortunes have been created. 
For the safe-keeping and the increase of the property 
he had inherited, thrift, caution, conservatism and 
prudent judgment were the indispensable qualities. 
And these traits were as natural to Mr. Higgins, as 
much a part of his make-up, as his love of music, his 
sense of honor and his perfect integrity of character. 

Personal Characteristics. 

I consider honor and integrity the foundation of 
Mr. Higgins' character. Superimposed upon this 

27 



In riDcmoriam 

basis was an impermeable stratum of cautious and 
sober conservatism. Never was it easier for a man 
to obey the prophet's command to ask for the old 
ways and walk therein. A college education stirs 
the mind and makes it hospitable to new ideas, but 
Mr. Higgins never had a college education. And, 
as I have already said, his peculiar business activi- 
ties were not favorable to the development of origi- 
nality. But in spite of these drawbacks, those who 
were close to him knew that he possessed a native 
originality and had initiative with strong character- 
istics tempered by a genial personality. It is no new 
phenomenon to find intellectual and practical con- 
servatism associated with a keen sense of personal in- 
dependence. This, in fact, is the substance of Matthew 
Arnold's account of the aristocracy of England. Novv- 
Mr. Higgins was one of the most democratic of men. 
But in his case, too, strong conservatism went hand in 
hand with a high spirit of personal independence. And 
this natural endowment was nourished by the good 
fortune which vouchsafed him. an economic com- 
petency. His business, too, compelled him to stand 
upon his own feet. And when he entered the Sen- 
ate, party man though he was, he insisted on satis- 
fying himself that the bills which the leaders favored 
really deserved his support. While he would work 
with others, he would be no man's tool. True to 
the inmost nature of the man was that utterance in 
his speech in reply to the notification of his nomina- 
tion for Governor: 

28 



frank Uda^Ianb HiGolns 

" Suggestions will be welcome, dictation repelled, 
and in the end my individual judgment alone must 
determine my official actions." 

Here is a man who, in office and in private life, 
exercises the highest functions of personality; he 
^\'ills liis own acts and takes the responsibility for 
them. No automaton, this, but an independent, 
self-asserting spirit ! 

]\Ien of self-reliance and backbone are apt to be 
courageous. And Mr. Higgins was no exception to 
the rule. What do we mean by courage .' Is it not 
a readiness to face pain and danger.' And when a 
man endures these ills in a good cause his courage 
is no longer a brute instinct but a moral attainment. 
Of Mr. Higgins, a Senator who knew him intimately 
writes: "I have never known a man who I thought 
possessed greater moral courage." While his friends 
recognized and admired his heroic braver^-, the pub- 
lic scarce suspected its existence. The multitude 
discern and applaud courage in the hero of the battle 
field, but in this modest civilian, small of stature, 
hating the glare of publicity, how should they be 
expected to discover it ? !Many actually thought 
him timid. Conservative he was, naturally averse 
to radical change, but timid never. With all the 
world against him here was a man brave enough not 
to be frightened into acting on the clamorous advice 
of others contrar}' to his own deliberate judgment. 
He was always brave enough to do what he thought 
his duty, and he did many things no timid man 
would have had the courage to do. V/hen warned 

29 



Un flDemoriam 

that official acts of his would be unpopular he would 
reply: "I am not afraid of the censure of public 
opinion; I shall be content if I satisfy my conscience." 
It takes a brave man to defy public opinion whether 
it is right or wrong. But Governor Higgins, out of 
loyalty to his own conscience and judgment, re- 
peatedly defied it; and the public resentment has 
not yet yielded, as it one day will yield, to grateful 
admiration of his courage and independence. 

There was no fear in the composition of this 
brave man. He had the Puritan's sense of duty 
and the Puritan's contempt of pain and danger. 
Twenty years before his death he became aware 
that he had a valvular trouble of the heart. Soon 
after the beginning of his work as Governor he was 
warned by a celebrated physician of the increasing 
seriousness of his malady, but he did not permit the 
warning to conflict with the idea of duty toward the 
State which was regnant in all his thoughts and acts. 
In the spring of 1906 the condition of his health had 
become so serious that he was ad\ised by the best 
medical experts to resign his office and go abroad. 
But though he then decided finally and irrevocably 
to retire from office at the end of his term — and his 
mind never wavered from that determination in spite 
of the strenuous efforts made to induce him to be- 
come a candidate for a second term — he could not 
bring himself to abandon the post to which his fel- 
low-citizens had summoned him. The appointed 
day's work must be done. Whatever the conse- 
quences to himself he would not ffinch from the per- 

30 



formance of his oflScial duty. He knew that he hved 
and worked in the encompassing shadow of death. 
Against the contingency of a sudden taking off in 
the absence of his family, he would have a friend stay 
with him at night in the Executive Mansion. Ilis 
affection for his family and his devotion to their hap- 
piness forbade his confiding to them the precarious 
tenure of his life. Why bring on those he loved un- 
happiness and sorrow on account of sufierings they 
could not alleviate or an issue no human power could 
avert? So his deep, loyal affection led him to bear 
his burden alone. Silently and bravely this heroic 
man went about liis daily duties. And at last, wasted 
with disease, his strength exhausted, he saw the year 
close and the day of his deliver^' dawn. One act 
only remained to be performed — to come back to 
Albany and assist in the inauguration of his successor 
in office. And though his physician forbade him to 
take part in the ceremony, and his family impor- 
tuned him to save his waning strength, naught availed 
against his courage, his devotion to duty and his 
deep sense of the respect and honor due to the Chief 
Magistrate of the Commonwealth. He came here 
and did his duty, though the strain probably short- 
ened his days. Say what you will of his public poli- 
cies and administration — and of these I shall speak 
hereafter — here certainly was a brave, high-minded 
and heroic man. 

I have spoken of the part played by domestic 
affection in the life of ^Ir. Higgrins. This is not a 
subject on which one can wnth propriety dilate in 

31 



Hn nDemoriam 

a public discourse. Yet our picture of the man 
would be very incomplete if all reference to his home 
life were omitted. Early in his life, in June, 
1878, he married Miss Kate Corrinne Noble, of 
Sparta, Wisconsin. Four children were born to 
them of whom one died in infancy, two sons and a 
daughter survive. Mr. Higgins' family was very dear 
to him, and their happiness and welfare were his con- 
stant aim. But love and happiness did not escape 
the alloy of suffering with which an inscrutable 
Providence is wont to temper their ecstasies. The 
physical ills of his family, which were sometimes 
serious, were the cause of intense suffering to the 
father. But the strands of life are woven together 
of joy and sorrow. And in that beautiful house at 
Olean — a house equally removed from sordidness 
and from magnificence — the neighbors recognized, 
till the angel of death shrouded it in gloom, one of 
those ideal homes in which the sweet charities of 
parents and children and the mutual ministrations 
of their love and service yield to mortal life its 
deepest and its purest joy and invest it, if anything 
temporal can invest it, with the halo and promise of 
eternity. 

Entrance on Public Life. 

There is one other personal characteristic which 
I must not forbear to mention; for it was deeply 
rooted in Mr. Higgins and made itself felt not only 
among his personal friends, but also among casual 
acquaintances and political associates. I have al- 
ready mentioned his fundamental integrity of char- 

32 



franh Tailaplan& Higotns 

acter. Honesty and sincerity go together, and Mr. 
Higgins was a man of transparent sincerity of 
thought and purpose. There was no guile in his 
nature. The note of genuineness — of being simply 
what he w^as and not desiring to appear otherwise — 
was indubitable and irresistible. And with this 
downright reality, this genuineness, this sincerity — 
all of wliich may be explained us honesty from an- 
other point of view — Mr. Higgins was also charac- 
terized by what I may call self-centered modesty — 
a quality which many a high official though equally 
honest finds altogether unattainable or even incon- 
ceivable. I have called this characteristic "self- 
centered modesty," because it seems to me to have 
been made up of two distinct and separable ele- 
ments. It was not a mere timid, bashful shrinking 
from puljlic view or public recognition. Rather was 
it an indifference to public appraisal because of what 
Tennyson once happily called a sense of central dig- 
nity. He thought that the merits of his acts and 
motives would be recognized without label. The 
spectacular methods of attracting attention and win- 
ning approval were wholly distasteful to him. The 
drum and trumpet style he could not adopt. Never 
did a w'orse self-advertiser sit in the Governor's 
chair. The goal of his ambition was not to have 
the public think highly of him, but to do the best 
he could for the public; and if his own judgment 
and conscience were satisfied he troubled himself 
little about the verdict of the public. It may well 
be that, for a public man, this quality was not an un- 

33 



Tin flDemoriam 

mitigated excellence. The successful statesman 
must take account of intelligent public opinion, for 
public opinion is the force that makes and unmakes 
governments. But in an age when so many poli- 
ticians take their programme from the last edition 
of the most sensational newspapers and can live only 
in the limelight of publicity and praise, it is refresh- 
ing to see a man who steers the ship of state by the 
stars of truth and right as God gives him to see the 
truth and right, careless of the admiration of spec- 
tators, careful only that the task be well and wisely 
done. 

I have been noting some of the characteristics of 
Mr. Higgins. They were certainly of an order to 
evoke the confidence, the admiration and even the 
affection of his friends and neighbors. Recall also 
the circumstance of his successful career in busi- 
ness and add the fact that he early showed an in- 
terest in the public affairs of his community, ren- 
dering substantial aid to worthy institutions and to 
enterprises calculated to promote the public welfare, 
and it readily becomes intelligible that he should 
have been selected in 1893 by his fellow-citizens in 
the Fiftieth district for the highest political honor 
in their gift — the office of State Senator. Always a 
Republican, he was elected on a Republican ticket 
by a plurality exceeding 8,000 votes over his oppo- 
nent, who had the support of the Democrats, Popu- 
lists and Socialists. He w^as renominated for three 
successive terms wdthout opposition and re-elected 
by increased pluralities at the elections of 1896, 

34 



1898 and 1900. In 1902 he was elected Lieutenant- 
Governor, liaving received a unanimous party nomi- 
nation. And in 1904, the year of the last Presi- 
dential election, he was elected Governor with a 
plurality over his Democratic rival which exceeded 
80,000 votes. 

For thirteen years, from the beginning of 1894 to 
the close of 1906, Mr. Higgins devoted himself to 
the service of our State. I know no public man in 
the United States who in those years rendered such 
faithful and valuable public service and at the same 
time received so little recognition for it. Now that 
he is gone, and detraction and misrepresentation are 
busy with new objects, justice will, I believe, be done 
him by the people whom he served. Not forever, 
believe me, but only for a day, does the melancholy 
creed of the pessimist hold true: 

"The evil that men do hves after them, 
The good is oft interred with their bones." 

Politics and Public Service. 

I have failed in my purpose if I have not made 
it clear that Mr. Higgins, by the intrinsic qualities 
of his mind and character, by his training and 
experience in business, by his economic independ- 
ence and by his interest in public affairs, was pre- 
eminently qualified to render effective service to the 
State, whether as a legislator or an administrator. 
Too many public offices are filled by men of the sort 
who ask: "What's in it for me.'" But here was a 
high-minded, capable, well-trained man, himself 

3S 



Tin riDemoriam 

financially independent, who came to the Senate, not 
to get something for himself, but to render the best 
service he could to his State. The only guarantee 
of good government worth anything lies in the men 
who actually conduct the government. Constitu- 
tion and laws are parchment and paper; the men 
who make and administer them are the animating 
and directing forces of government. Take him as 
he was, and I say he was at once an honor and a 
safeguard to any legislature in our Union. And 
I am confident that it is by inducing men of this 
stamp to enter the public service and to remain in 
that service that the character of our politics is to be 
elevated and ennobled. Yet how many prosperous 
business men in the State of New York are ready to 
follow the example set by Senator Higgins ? Why, 
they denounce "the politicians" as thieves and plun- 
derers, and yet they will not move a finger to aid in 
the supreme task of governing the State. Though 
the Commonwealth perish they must heap up 
fortunes ! 

It was different with Frank Wayland Higgins. 
During his first term as Senator I had the pleasure 
of making his acquaintance — an acquaintance which 
(though continued) I regret to say the divergency of 
our occupations and the distance which separated 
our homes prevented ripening into the intimacy of 
friendship. Our conversation turned upon the nat- 
ural and congenial theme of public service. I have 
not forgotten, nor shall I ever forget, the earnest 
words with which he described the existing situation 

36 



franli TKIla^Ian^ Bioains 

and difficulties. "Look at the newspapers," he ex- 
claimed. "They denounce all public servants as 
' politicians ' and all politicians as creatures who seek 
office to enrich themselves at the expense of the 
State. Now consider my own case. I am here at 
a sacrifice annually of thousands of dollars, but I 
am here because I desire to serve the State and work 
for the public welfare. The honor of this service has 
appealed to me also. But if low and discreditable 
motives are to be imputed to every man sim{)ly 
because he is a servant of the State public office will 
cease to be a place of honor and self-respecting men 
will avoid it." 

Surely election by the people to a public office 
is no certificate of dishonesty in the candidate. 
It was a humiliating discover}' for ]\Ir. Higgins to 
find himself, because he was a Senator of the State 
of New York, ranked with heelers, grafters, and 
bribe-takers under the comprehensive and damna- 
tory category of "the politicians." I invoke the 
memory of his stainless honor and integrity against 
this desecration of thought and language. Is it not 
high time that we recognized in politics the science 
and art of government and in politicians the fellow- 
citizens we elect to discharge that honorable func- 
tion.'' The ancient Greeks, who gave us the terms, 
conceived of politics as the sister of ethics and they 
ranked their politicians among the wisest and best. 
The current conception of politics amongst us is a 
shame and reproach. I appeal to our people and to 
our newspapers to restore it to its historic dignity. 

S7 



In flDemoriam 

Especially in discussing politicians, let us abandon 
the folly and injustice of condemning the class as 
such and distinguish between grafters — and we 
shall always have grafters in politics as we have 
grafters in business and the professions — and high- 
minded, honorable, faithful, and effective public 
servants, like Frank Wayland Higgins. 

On the Finance Committee. 

The Senate, at any rate, showed its appreciation 
of the new member. Mr. Higgins was made Chair- 
man of the Committee on Taxation and Retrench- 
ment and a member of the Committee on Finance. 
He was kept on these committees during the entire 
period of his service in the Senate from 1894 to 1902, 
and from 1896 he was not only a member, but he 
was the Chairman of the Committee on Finance. 
As every one knows, the Finance Committee of the 
Senate and Ways and Means Committee of the 
Assembly control all State appropriations and exer- 
cise an enormous influence on the policy of taxation. 
They are, therefore, the most important of all legis- 
lative committees. And Mr. Higgins was Chairman 
of the Finance Committee of the Senate for a longer 
period than any other man in the history of our 
State. His training, his experience, his mental and 
moral qualities and habits all conspired to quaHfy 
him for the position. His administrative ability 
is confirmed by the following letter to him from 
President Roosevelt : 

38 



Oyster Bay, N. Y., Sept. 18, 1904. 
My dear Lieutenant-Governor: 

Can you come to see me on Wednesday ? You 
know without my needing to say, how pleased I am 
at your nomination. While I was Governor, and you 
were Chairman of the Finance Committee of the 
Senate, you and I were thrown very closely together 
and I have never had the good fortune to be thrown 
with any public servant of higher integrity, or of 
greater administrative ability. If you are elected, 
and I am confident you will be, the people of the 
State can rest in absolute confidence that the admin- 
istration of the affairs at Albany will be conducted on 
the highest possible plane of efficiency and hcmesty. 

With all regards, and with congratulation less 
to you than to the people of this commonwealth, 

believe me 

Your friend, 

THEODORE ROOSE\^LT. 

The greatest finance minister of modern times 
was Gladstone. I shall not commit the folly of 
comparing Governor Higgins with one of the three 
or four historic statesmen of the nineteenth century. 
But in their attitude towards public finance 
and their treatment of the problem of expenditure 
there are some real resemblances between the two 
— resemblances so striking and significant that I 
cannot forbear calling attention to them. The 
initial difference, however, is marked enough. For 
when Peel in 1841 offered Gladstone the post of 

39 



Hn flDemoriam 

Vice-President of the Board of Trade (which was 
his first office) Gladstone, whose mind had hitherto 
ranged chiefly within the circle of ecclesiastical sub- 
jects, had to confess that he knew nothing whatever of 
the commerce of the country, and in deep mortifica- 
tion complained to himself that he was "set to govern 
packages." But there is place for statesmanship in 
the business of "governing packages," as Gladstone 
soon discovered. And his budget of 1860, which grew 
out of that experience, was one of the most stupendous 
achievements of his life. We are too apt to think of 
Gladstone as Prime Minister. But not only was his 
reputation in British politics won as a financier (and 
perhaps his financial reforms are the most abiding 
monuments of his genius) but he was Chancellor of 
the Exchequer under three different Prime Ministers 
and his connection with the treasury covered a longer 
period than was attained by the greatest of his prede- 
cessors. Hear then what this great minister of finance 
says of his functions and obligations: 

"No Chancellor of the Exchequer is worth his 
salt who makes his own popularity either his first 
consideration, or any consideration at all, in admin- 
istering the public purse. In my opinion the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer is the trusted and confidential 
steward of the public. He is under a sacred obliga- 
tion with regard to all that he consents to spend." 

Public Economy. 

I ask you who knew Mr. Higgins whether 
Gladstone's manner of acting, thinking and speaking 

40 



about the financial service of the State was not 
habitual antl deeply engrained in your late colleague ? 
Was it not always before you when he was Chairman 
of the Finance Committee and Governor? For my 
own part I knew no man more deeply impressed 
with the sense of his stewardship to the public, 
^more resolutely set on economy in expenditures, 
more ready to sacrifice his own popularity to safe- 
guarding the treasury of the State. Economy, 
thrift of public money, resistance to wasteful or 
unnecessary outlays: this was the constant burden 
of his utterances. It would have been so easy to 
practice liberality, and purchase popularity, with the 
moneys of the State! But Mr. Higgins was too 
honest to approve a dubious appropriation, too 
brave and independent to care for the unpopularity 
which came with retrenchment. 

His remarks and speeches during all these years 
in the Finance Committee have not been recorded. 
But the substance of them is preserved in the mes- 
sages and public papers he issued as Governor. A 
good business man, he justly denounced as "bad 
public finance" an excess of running expenses over 
receipts. A wise administrator, he insisted, where- 
ever possible, on balancing the account by effecting 
a reduction of expenditures rather than by an in- 
crease of revenues. The growing spirit of expendi- 
ture in the public service alarmed him as it alarmed 
Gladstone. And he strove to exorcise it, as Gladstone 
strove, by compelling the practice of rigid economy 
as an alternative to increased taxation. His study 

41 



Hn fiDcmoriam 

and business training enabled him to realize and act 
upon Lecky's demonstration of how prominent a 
place a sound system of finance holds among the 
vital elements of a state's stability and well-being, 
how few political changes are worth purchasing 
by its sacrifice, and how widely and seriously human 
happiness is affected by excessive, injudicious, and 
unjust taxation. 

Watchfulness in Expenditures. 

Strict adherence to the principle of public econ- 
omy is the fundamental virtue of a minister of finance. 
But it is not the only quality requisite to successful 
conduct of his office. The steward of the public 
purse must see that, when public money is appropri- 
ated, it is appropriated to the most deserving objects 
and that in its application to those objects it is 
wisely, economically, and fruitfully administered. 
In other words, the actual spending of the State 
must be regulated by strict business methods. Now 
Mr. Higgins's training and characteristics admirably 
qualified him to discharge this function. And no 
Chairman of the Finance Committee ever performed 
it with more painstaking care or conscientious fidelity. 
There are many State institutions and departments 
which this great commonwealth is called upon to 
maintain. And even in their ordinary operations 
there is opportunity, without any dishonesty in the 
managers, for wasteful or unnecessary expenditures. 
But these never escaped the sharp scrutiny of Mr. 
Higgins. He seemed to follow every dollar of public 

42 



franh TIClal?Ian^ Mtooins 

money to its ultimate destination and to know if it 
was not producing the maximum of efficiency. 
And, that he might have the State finances, like his 
own personal business, always under his eye, he had 
kept at his home in Olean — and at his own expense 
— books of account showing the appropriations and 
expenditures for the various institutions, depart- 
ments, and public works of the State. Should not 
these devoted services be remembered with OT'iitude ? 
The modest man himself made no ado about them 
He was simply serving the State to the best of his 
ability. His experience, too, suggested legislation 
for the better regulation of certain public business, 
and he introduced two bills which were enacted into 
laws that have produced highly beneficial results. 
The one law makes it a misdemeanor for any State 
officer or manager of a State institution to let a con- 
tract for a sum in excess of the amount appropriated 
by the Legislature. The other, known as the Higgins 
Law, requires that all moneys received by a depart- 
ment, institution, or commission of the State shall 
be paid over to the State Treasurer and not paid out 
again except by an appropriation of the Legislature. 
It is the careful business man saying to his agents: 
"You shall spend only such money as I put at your 
disposal and you shall not spend a cent before you 
have it." And when he was Governor he surprised 
a member of a State commission who had asked for 
his approval of certain items of expenditure without 
vouchers by this laconic but characteristic lecture: 
"I must see every voucher for the expenditure of 

43 



Hn riDemoriam 

every dollar for which I am responsible, and what is 
more I shall give careful consideration to the charac- 
ter of the expenditure before giving it my approval." 

His Financial Measures. 

But neither a reform in financial administration, 
nor a continuous scrutiny of expenditures, nor a 
deep-seated repugnance to waste, nor a spirit even of 
cheese-paring economy will relieve a minister of 
finance, in a gro^ving and prosperous State, from the 
necessity of imposing new taxes to meet expenditures 
which legitimately and inevitably increase. In this 
State of New York expenditures for all objects not 
only mount with the rapid growth of the population, 
but in certain directions, for reasons we all know, 
they have enormously expanded in recent years. 
I have in mind especially the legislative appropria- 
tions for the maintenance of charitable institutions, 
formerly a charge on the counties, and for the 
improvement of the means of communication, which 
the people themselves have directly authorized. 
Mr. Higgins may have doubted the wisdom and 
expediency of spending so much money on the 
improvement of canals, but he pledged himself if 
elected Governor to carry out through an honest 
and efficient administration this mandate of the 
people. And as Chairman of the Finance Com- 
mittee he was always intelligently and sympa- 
thetically interested in the other extraordinary burden 
I have mentioned — the public institutions of charity, 
for whose well-being and improvement he was, 

44 



f ranft Uttlaijlanb Hiootns 

indeed, universally recognized as a zealous worker. 
It was a question, then, of raising revenue to meet 
the largely augmented and continuously advancing 
financial obligations of the State. And it fell to Mr. 
Higgins more than to any other man to solve that 
difficult problem. 

For many years he had been a student of Adam 
Smith and his successors in the science of public 
finance. As a member of a committee of the Senate 
commissioned to study and devise reforms in our 
State system of ta.xation he caused to be brought 
before the Committee in the City of New York 
through a long period of time many experts upon 
the perplexing questions of taxation and public 
finance, to all of wliich questions he gave long and 
laborious consideration. 

A practical business man as well as a student of 
economics, he weighed both the soundness of a tax 
and its remote and ulterior results. This accounts for 
his attitude on the mortgage tax which, in spite of all 
the objections to which it is obnoxious, had at any 
rate the merit of potentiality to furnish revenue. On 
the whole, however, the surprising thing is that 
Mr. Iliijo-ins made so few mistakes in his financial 
measures. His Stock Transfer Act has, as he antici- 
pated, produced a substantial revenue wthout 
appreciably burdening or even checking the business 
of stock-brokers. And the general policy of raising 
all State revenues by indirect taxation, which is or 
should be associated with the name of Mr. Higgins, 
is undoubtedly a great improvement on the general 

45 



In flDemoriam 

property tax which it superseded and is likely to 
remain in operation till the phenomenon of increasing 
fortunes calls attention to the wisdom of an income 
tax to supplement our present inheritance tax, neither 
of which, in my judgment, should be allowed by the 
State to fall into the monopoly of the Federal govern- 
ment. Mr. Higgins' name, it may be said \\'ith truth, 
is writ large — and it is generally writ wisely and 
always honorably — over our present system of 
State taxation. 

Nothing was more natural than the promotion of 
this Chairman of the Finance Committee to the office 
of Lieutenant-Governor and then his advancement 
to the highest office in the gift of the people of the 
State. He was nominated for Governor because he 
was the most available candidate in liis party. And 
he accepted the nomination because it offered an 
opportunity for the highest public service. If any 
personal motive influenced him it was less ambition 
than the desire of an honor which would gratify the 
members of his family whom he loved so dearly. 

Mr. Higgins as Governor. 

In many respects, both on account of his long 
experience in pubhc affairs and familiarity with the 
details of the needs of the State as well as a certain 
quality of the judicial temperament it was fitting that 
he should be Governor of the State. He demon- 
strated on a more conspicuous arena his old-time 
honesty, courage, independence, caution, conserva- 
tism, and scrupulous conscientiousness and fidelity 

46 



jfranfi IWHaijlanJ) Higolns 

to duty. He held the office, too, at a time of poHtical 
storm and stress. And though he himself had too 
much of the dignity and courage of the stoic ever 
to give a hint of his ill-health, the critical historian 
of the future will note that when he entered on his 
office he was a sick man and when he laid it down at 
the end of his term he was already in the valley of the 
shadow of death. The spectacle of tliis dying man 
going month after month about his daily duties 
bravely and loyally, ceasing not till even the last was 
performed, and then after life's fitful fever lying 
down quietly to sleep, is one which no mind can 
contemplate without admiration for its inspiring 
heroism or without sadness at the pathos of human 
existence. 

The Governor and the Insurance Companies. 

From that closing scene I return to I\Ir. Higgins's 
administration of the high office of Chief Executive 
of our State. The single business of most importance 
which came before him was the question of insurance 
investigation and legislation. It was, as you all recall, 
a matter of intense dramatic interest and of deep 
and general popular concern. Governor Higgins's 
conduct of this business exhibited the most character- 
istic qualities of his mind, and illustrated the most 
fundamental maxims of his administration. Im- 
movable by newspaper clamor, he took his own 
time to consider whether the State should inter- 
vene and, if so, what it should do. He would neither 
bring the matter before the Legislature at its regular 

47 



In HDemortam 

session, nor would he call an extraordinary session 
for its consideration. Finally, however, it became 
clear to him that the situation called for a revision 
of the existing Insurance Law. And the Legisla- 
ture being then in extraordinary session for another 
purpose, he recommended the appointment of a 
joint committee of the Senate and Assembly to 
investigate the operations of life insurance com- 
panies doing business in the State, for the purpose 
of preparing and recommending to the next regular 
session of the Legislature such legislation as might 
be adequate and proper to restore public confidence 
and to compel life insurance companies to conduct 
a safe, honest, and open business for the benefit 
of their policy holders. The splendid work per- 
formed by that Committee, of which Senator Arm- 
strong was Chairman, and the valuable remedial 
legislation it placed upon the statute books, have 
become a part of our history; and our citizens have 
set upon it the stamp of their approval by electing 
the able and fearless counsel of the Committee Gov- 
ernor of the State, and that, too, under circumstances 
which peculiarly mark him as the object of their 
favor, their confidence, and their hope for the future. 
I owe it to the occasion to add that this gentleman, 
now "the rose and expectancy of our fair State," 
had already distinguished himself as counsel of the 
Gas Investigating Committee, of which Senator 
Stevens was Chairman, and that for this, his first 
official position, he was recommended by Governor 
Higgins. 

48 



jfranfi Maplan^ Hiooins 

His Appointments. 

Mr. Higgins was a good judge of men. On turn- 
ing over the newspapers of the period I find that, 
speaking generally, his appointments received ap- 
proval as just, wise and well-considered. If, under 
the influence of imperfect knowledge, erroneous 
judgment, or the infirmities of failing health, he some- 
times made a mistake, the exception only proves the 
validity of my general statement. I repeat that, 
whether you consider his appointments to judicial 
or to administrative offices, they were as a rule of a 
high order. And no man ever conceived more 
truly or formulated more clearly the obligations 
of the Governor in relation to public officials. "I 
believe it to be the duty of the Executive of the 
State," he declared, "to hold to strict accountability 
every official of the State Government, and I shall 
not be deterred by political or other considerations 
from a full and conscientious discharge of such 
duty." 

There were two other maxims which IMr. Hig- 
gins emphasized as Chief Executive. One was the 
Governor's independence of the party boss, the other 
was the severance of the executive from the legisla- 
tive and the judiciary. 

The Governor and the Legislature. 
It sounds simple, and it was doubtless the inten- 
tion of the framers of the Constitution, that the Gov- 
ernor should attend to executive business and the 
Legislature to making laws. But the Constitution 

49 



lln fiDemoriam 

itself makes it the duty of the Governor to recom- 
mend measures to the Legislature, and confers upon 
him the power of vetoing bills which the Legislature 
has passed. And under our party system of gov- 
ernment consultation between the Governor and the 
legislative leaders of his party, especially in regard 
to the fate of measures which the Governor himself 
has recommended to the Legislature, is so natural 
that it has seemed inevitable. The success of the 
policies of the Executive and the success of the party 
at the polls have suggested a mutual understanding 
or condoned reciprocal pressure between the Gov- 
ernor and his party in the Legislature. This has 
been the general practice at Albany. It was the rule 
followed by Mr. Roosevelt when Governor, as it is 
the rule he has since followed as President. Mr. 
Higgins e^adently desired to alter, if not to reverse 
it. He said, during the session of the Legislature in 
1905: "I have left it to the Legislature to determine 
what acts it would send to me, only recommending 
by public message." Later in the year, however, he 
intervened in the contest for the vacant speakership 
and saw the Assembly organized in accordance with 
his predilections, which, of course, aided him in se- 
curing such legislative acts as he desired. And he 
opened his message of 1906 with an expression of 
"earnest hope and confident expectation that har- 
mony and forbearance shall continue to characterize 
the relations between the Executive and the Legis- 
lature." On the whole, therefore, I think it ques- 
tionable whether Mr. Higgins succeeded in drawing 

60 



franh "QCla^Ianb Hiflgins 

as clear a line of demarcation between the executive 
and legislative departments as he really desired to 
do and apparently supposed that he had done. Al- 
together it must be pronounced a still unsettled ques- 
tion how far, under our party system, it is possible 
for a Governor to maintain a permanent position of 
stately isolation from the Legislature. Gladstone 
cites it as an illustration of the slowness of his politi- 
cal education that he had so habitually "thought of 
things only and not taken persons into view." Yet 
in spite of this tendency to ignore political poten- 
tates, with the people enthusiastically behind him, 
Gladstone succeeded all the same. For as Emerson 
says, "one man with God" is a majority, and the 
advocate of just and righteous government may al- 
ways rely on vox populi, vox Dei. 

The Governor and Bossism. 

It is probable, too, that I\lr. Higgins laid a 
good deal of stress in his own mind on the Gov- 
ernor's independence of a party boss. He had liim- 
self grown up under the boss system and was 
thoroughlv conversant with all its methods and with 
all its results. If any aspect of the system had been 
wanting in liis own political experience it was set down 
for his edification in the political history of our 
Commonwealth. For no State in the Union presents 
such a long and unbroken line of powerful autocrats as 
the State of New York. Beginning with the birth of 
the State in 1777, we have the names of George Clin- 
ton, the first elected and oft re-elected Governor; 

61 



In riDemoriam 

Alexander Hamilton, a statesman of world-wide 
reputation, but a poor leader of his followers; Aaron 
Burr, the hope of lais party and the victim of unprin- 
cipled ambition; DeWitt CHnton, the builder of the 
Erie canal, the most autocratic of politicians; Mar- 
tin Van Buren, the smoothest of diplomats and skill- 
fulest manager of men; Thurlow Weed, most inde- 
fatigable of workers, the eyes and judgment of his 
party, the alter ego of Seward and finally the confi- 
dential adviser of Lincoln. And from the Civil war 
to the close of the nineteenth century the race of 
party autocrats, though with modifications of the 
type, has continued through Seymour and Tilden 
and Roscoe Conkling to men still living, whom in 
the last two decades we have seen holding the politi- 
cal destiny of New York in the hollow of their hands. 
Only since the dawn of the twentieth century has 
the boss system fallen into decay. Claimants, in- 
deed, there are for the vacant sceptre, but none has 
succeeded in grasping it. Nor, if I understand the 
conditions aright, can any party manager ever again 
establish a permanent dictatorship. The life-blood 
of the boss system lay in the spoils of oflSce. But 
with the introduction of civil service reform and the 
general extension of the merit method of appoint- 
ment the boss has lost the war-chest out of which he 
subsisted his followers and by which he maintained 
party discipline and upheld his own personal im- 
portance. The cohesive power of public office as 
victors' spoils is shattered to pieces. And the aspir- 
ing boss can to-day find no substitute. 

52 



frank TRUaipIanb Mlootns 

For a brief interval, indeed, it seemed as though 
the decaying system might be re-estabUshed on a 
basis far more dangerous and far more immoral. A 
class of political managers appeared who undertook 
to secure valuable franchises and special legislative 
favors for corporations in return for contributions to 
the party treasury, or even for personal advantage 
to the managers and their lieutenants. But this 
nefarious business has aroused the indignation and 
evoked the opprobium of the pained and horrified 
conscience of our people, who are now imperiously 
demanding higher character and greater public spirit 
in the men who aspire to office and to party leader- 
ship. The boss, wielding absolute power over the 
destiny of his party to the extent even of controlling 
the official action of Governor and Legislature — and 
that merely because he "runs the machine" and 
marshals the forces to win elections — is gone — never 
again, I think, to return. 

Of course we shall always have corrupt men in 
politics as elsewhere — men who sell their souls for a 
mess of pottage or for thirty pieces of silver. As 
political brigandage did not originate with the boss 
system, neither v.ill it end with it. But even that 
system could not have maintained its vitality for a 
century and a quarter in our State had not many of 
the y)arty autocrats been not only bosses of the 
machine, but also political leaders of extraordinary 
sagacity and ability. And there is always a demand 
and a place for political leaders. The dift'erence 
between a political leader and a political boss — 

53 



II n flDemoriam 

though the two characters may sometimes be united 
in a single person — is that one is the engineer of the 
party machine, the other is the soul of the party, 
giving it the ideals and the policies by which alone 
it is kept alive or deserves to be kept alive. The 
demand of the American democracy in this twentieth 
century is for political leaders. 

The administration of Governor Higgins fell be- 
tween two epochs, one dead, the other waiting to be 
born. He turned his back on the boss system, in 
which he had been nurtured and under which he had 
done much of his best work as Chairman of the Fi- 
nance Committee. He would have no boss over him 
as Governor. Neither, on the other hand, had he any 
desire to be a boss. As a constitutional officer of the 
State, he was determined to maintain his independ- 
ence of external and irresponsible dictation or con- 
trol. He would be no man's puppet, no mere cleri- 
cal agent, no rubber-stamp. But, while he saw that 
the age of bossism was gone, and while he was reso- 
lutely set on his own official independence, he did 
believe in political leadership as is shown in what 
follows. 

Retirement and Death. 

His own conception of what he did and what he 
aimed to do was set forth in public statements writ- 
ten in September, 1906. Here is what he said: 

"I am a confirmed believer in party organization 
and party leadership, but I have no faith in the boss 
whose loyalty to the people's representatives is meas- 
ured by their personal allegiance to him. Such a 

54 



Ifranft lKHa\»lant) Miootns 

one serves his party only when he can compel his 
party to serve him. 

"Two years ago I began my campaign with the 
pledge that I would, if elected, have an administra- 
tion of ray own. I have kept that pledge. By doing 
so, I have met opposition from those who believe 
that governors and legislators are safer public serv- 
ants when they follow the guidance of a party boss 
than when they think for themselves and act on their 
own responsilnlity. I have incurred the displeasure 
of others who might have been friendly had I become 
their follower and sought the editorial sanctum for 
counsel and advice. But the party in its primaries 
has indorsed my administration throughout the State 
and elected delegates favorable to my renomination. 

"I have long been conscious of the fact that the 
oflBce has been exacting from me sacrifices that I 
can ill afford. I need time for rest and for attention 
to my personal affairs. The result of the contest in 
the primaries for the principle of executive inde- 
pendence has given courage to all who believe that 
the Governor should not be the puppet of the party 
organization and hope to all who deplore the su- 
premacy of irresponsible political absolutism. It 
also leaves me free to gratify my personal inclina- 
tion with honor and to withdraw my name from fur- 
ther consideration. 

"I have not sought and I shall not accept a 
renomination." 

But out of office, as in oflBce, a man like Frank 
Wayland Higgins is a boon to any State. Alas! he 

55 



■fln fiDemortam 

had scarcely laid down his office when the Great 
Reaper claimed his life. Few men in our State 
were so well qualified by character, training, and 
experience to aid in solving the great question which 
now presses upon us — a question we must solve 
wisely if the Republic is to endure. 

New Political Problems. 

We live in an age in which not only the manage- 
ment of parties but the constitution of parties are 
undergoing change. The modification and trans- 
formation of parties — nay, more, the dissolution and 
recreation of parties — are in constant progress, none 
the less rapid because for the most part going on 
silently and without observation. The fundamental 
difference of parties in this country through most 
of the nineteenth century lay in their respective atti- 
tudes to the Constitution, the one being a party of 
strict construction and the other a party of broad 
construction, making liberal use of the doctrine of 
implied powers. The former party has been the 
champion of State rights, the latter of a strong Fed- 
eral government. This distinction between the two 
parties has, however, been gradually fading away, 
though quite recently it has been re\-ived in criti- 
cisms of the centralizing policy of President Roosevelt. 

Meanwhile wise and observing men in both par- 
ties have come to recognize that the constant en- 
largement of Federal functions and the growing con- 
solidation of Federal powers are a real menace to 
the sovereignty of the States, and consequently to 

56 



jfranR "Ma^lanb Mloatns 

the independent political life of their people, and 
worst of all to the liabit of local self-government, 
which is, in a last analysis, the sheet anchor of our 
democratic Repulilic. This is a tendency to be re- 
sisted to the uttermost. For universal history and 
American experience ahke confirm the maxim of 
Lord Acton that "divided, or rather multiplied, 
authorities are the foundation of good government." 

Important as this consideration is, I do not ex- 
pect to see schools of constitutional interpretation 
again becoming the bases of political parties. That 
fundamentum divisionis, which was inevitable at the 
beginning of our political history, had exhausted it- 
self with the close of the Civil war and the settlement 
of the questions growing out of it. 

INIore and more the center of gravity in politics 
has shifted from the constitutional to the economic 
sphere. The great majority of problems which to- 
day interest American voters are economic problems. 
It is economic problems which are transforming, 
recasting and recreating our political parties. And 
herein our history is but following the course of 
European history. "If we look over Europe," says 
Mr. Bryce, "we shall find that the grounds on which 
parties have been built and contests waged since the 
beginnings of free governments have been in sub- 
stance but few. In the hostility of rich and poor, 
or of capital and labor, in the fears of the Haves 
and the desire of the Ilavenots, we perceive the most 
frequent ground, though it is often disguised." 

57 



Hn riDemoriam 

Control of Corporations. 

The form in which this problem has presented 
itself in the United States is that of control of cor- 
porations, especially the public service corporations. 
And he who considers the vast magnitude and irre- 
sponsibility of the power which one man or a few 
men can exercise through corporate organization, 
the amount of injustice they can practice or the in- 
jury they can inflict on the public, the alarming fre- 
quency with which they bribe or corrupt officials and 
legislators, will recognize that the task of regulating 
the management of corporations and narrowing the 
range of their action is imperative in the public in- 
terest, and that, though it is a task of colossal diffi- 
culty, it cannot longer be postponed. 

That former Governor of our State, who has since 
been President of the United States, and who is to- 
day the most honored and trusted private citizen of 
our Republic, recently declared that, though much 
of the popular outcry against corporations was irra- 
tional, "there must be some form of governmental 
supervision, but it should be planned in a quiet hour, 
not in one of angry excitement." And conservative 
as Governor Higgins was, I think he recognized the 
pressing incumbency of this problem. Perhaps it 
was in his mind as the great issue of the day when 
he expressed his satisfaction with the action of the 
Saratoga convention and announced to his party 
that they had selected "the right man to head the 
ticket at this time." 

58 



jTranh TKHapIan^ MiQgtns 

It is a great loss to the State that ^Ir. Higgins 
is not here to co-operate with his wisdom and mod- 
eration in carrying out the program of providing 
effective State supervision of pubhc service corpora- 
tions, not in "angry excitement," which ^Er. Cleve- 
land properly deprecates, but in a spirit of justice 
and fair play, with due regard to the public interest 
on the one hand and the danger of mixing politics 
with business on the other, "without animosity to- 
ward rights of property, but with a just insistence 
upon the performance of public obligations," if I 
may appropriate the felicitous language of a recent 
speech of our present Governor. 

The regulation of consolidated and incorporated 
capital is likely to be the problem of American poli- 
tics for the next few years or even decades. No 
thoughtful man, acquainted with the lessons of hu- 
man history, can survey the prospect which stretches 
before us without deep anxiety. It took a great 
civil war, extending over four years, with a sacrifice 
of hundreds of thousands of lives and an expendi- 
ture of millions of money, to dispose of the consti- 
tutional issue, on which American political parties 
formerly divided. Now that the contest of our par- 
ties is waged over economic questions — with cor- 
porations, indeed, in the foreground, but with the 
demand for a more equal distribution of worldly 
goods in the distance and the spectre of socialism 
hovering just beyond the horizon — what eye but the 
eye of Omniscience can divine w-hither and to what 
we are drifting. Yet we cannot idly fold our hands 

60 



II n fIDemoriam 

or like cowards retreat. Whether we will or no, we 
must face and solve the politico-economic problems 
which the Zeitgeist has thrust upon us. But every- 
thing depends on the way in which we attempt the 
task and the spirit in which we go about it. The 
safety of States lies in the wisdom, the justice, the 
moderation and the civic righteousness of their citi- 
zens. If these fail us, the doom of our Republic is 
written in the history of Rome. 

Rome's Lessox to America. 

In all the vast and varied panorama of the history 
of mankind I know nothing so full of interest and 
instruction for this generation of American people as 
the later days of the Roman Republic — the century 
of the Gracchi, of Marius and Sulla, of Crassus and 
Cato, of Pompey and Julius Caesar. When the older 
Gracchus appeared on the scene Rome was still a 
repubhc, though a republic which had undergone 
transformation from the earlier city-state with its 
centuries of courage, civic virtue and great achieve- 
ment. Rome had become a world-power and was 
bearing the responsibilities and the burdens of em- 
pire. Her population was no longer a race of farm- 
ers; her citizens had left the soil and crowded into the 
cities. The blood of the native stock had become 
diluted with a foreign strain. The state itself was 
distracted by a contest between the popular Comitia 
and a senatorial oligarchy in which each claimed 
and strove to secure supreme sovereignty. 

60 



Unhappily for Rome a self-constituted saviour 
of society appeared wlio had eyes to see that the 
times were out of joint and conceit to beUeve that 
he was born to set them right. This man, who 
thought himself foreordained by the gods to be the 
regenerator of Rome, was Tiberius Gracchus. He 
was, says the historian, Oman: 

"One of the most striking instances in history of 
the amount of evil that can be brought about by a 
thoroughly honest and well-meaning man, who is so 
entirely convinced of the righteousness of his own 
intentions and the wisdom of his own measures, that 
he is driven to regard any one who strives to hinder 
him as not only foolish but morally wicked. The 
type of exalted doctrinaire who exclaims that any 
constitutional check that hinders his plans must be 
swept away without further inquiry, that every 
political opponent is a bad man who must be 
crushed, has been known in many lands and ages, 
from ancient Greece down to the France of the 
Revolution." 

Tiberius came forward as the champion of the 
small producers who had been driven out of busi- 
ness by the operations of the great capitalists. In 
those days, of course, wealth consisted in land, the 
business of manufacturing and transportation being 
of little account. And Tiberius had persuaded him- 
self that the decay of freeholds, the decline of busi- 
ness on the small scale, was due to the machina- 
tions of the large operators who bought up the de- 
serted farms and turned them into sheep ranches. 

61 



In nDemortam 

His simple device for the rehabilitation of ItaUan 
agriculture was the resumption by the State of lands 
which squatters, without any interference on the 
part of the State, had occupied for terms ranging 
from seventy to two hundred years, and of which, 
therefore, they supposed they had a perpetual lease, 
and the distribution of these lands among the petty 
farmers who had abandoned agriculture and were 
now sitting idly in the streets of Rome. And as 
Gracchus refused, in a pique, to grant compensa- 
tion to extinguish the rights which undisturbed occu- 
pation had created, his "reforms" resulted in riot 
and massacre in which the reformer himself miser- 
ably perished. But his policy of confiscation with- 
out compensation launched the State upon a century 
of civil war and ruthless proscription, which ended 
in the overthrow of the Republic and the soulless 
despotism of the Csesars. 

Cato and Governor Higgins. 

Let us hope that, warned by the lessons of 
history, the American people will address them- 
selves to the settlement of the grave politico-economic 
question which now occupies all minds, with caution, 
with passionless sobriety, with the spirit of conserva- 
tism, and with a reverence on the one hand for the 
rights of persons, which alone makes citizenship 
worth enjoying, and on the other with a respect for 
the rights of property, which is the basal safeguard 
of all human ci\aHzation. It is not destiny, but 
individuals with free creative will and purpose, that 

62 



make or mar the course of the times. "Ten Catos," 
says the historian, " ten Catos might have saved 
the Roman Republic." And Cato was the honest, 
capable, old-fashioned, conservative Roman — and 
the best financial expert in the Senate. 

Cato was the prototype of Frank Wayland 
Higgins — a man who by his character, his training, 
and his successful experience in politics and in 
business could have given us wise and patriotic 
advice in regard to the great and pressing political 
problem of our day. We have lost him, alas! But 
I have absolute confidence that the State which 
breeds such men will not be wanting in statesmen 
capable of the highest functions of government, 
or in citizens who make the atmosphere and mould 
the opinion in which alone statesmen can live and 
move and perform their great achievements. What 
we need to-day, to meet the rising tide of radicalism, 
is a wise and progressive conservatism — a conserva- 
tism with a disposition to maintain and a willingness 
to improve existing institutions. We shall indeed 
always have different parties and opposing policies. 
But the one safe principle for the guidance of all 
parties, and for the settlement not only of the question 
of the day but of all public questions is this: tenacious 
of justice, tender of property, and true to the Consti- 
tution and the laws. 

Conclusion. 

Yet it is not the picture of Mr. Higgins as a 
public servant but the image of the man himself 

63 



Iln nDemortam 

that lingers in the minds and hearts of those who 
knew him well, who enjoyed his friendship, or were 
the objects of his affection and devotion. I dare not 
presume to voice, nor would I desecrate, the deeps 
of their loving and hallowed memories. But I may 
perhaps be permitted to express the sentiments 
which each of them cherishes for their departed 
friend in words borrowed from our greatest poet: 

" The dearest iWend to me, the kindest man. 
The best-conditioned and unwearied spirit 
In doing courtesies." 

Anthem by the choir of St. Peter's Church : 

aLL ye who weep, O come to Me; 
I will comfort you. 
All ye who suflfer, O come to Me; 

I will console you. 
All ye who mourn, O come to Me; 

I am your peace. 
All ye who die, O come to Me; 
For life eternal. 



Rt. Rev. Bishop Burke pronounced the following 
benediction : 

Now, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost, amen, we beseech Thee, Almighty and Eter- 
nal God, to send down, for Jesus Christ's sake, a 
benediction upon all those who have taken part this 
night in this memorial service, and we humbly 
implore Thee, Almight}^ God, that Thy blessing 
may be set upon us and remain with us forever. 
Amen. 

64 



